Rescheduled - Spring 2014 3D Printing Meetup

Hello all, We've secured a great location for the eminent 3D printing meetup group. We'll be convening @ VisionPulse in the sorrento valley/mira mesa area ( map link here). It's a great facility and we've got the auditorium, so we'll have plenty of room. note: the change of venue required us to change the start time to 6:00. hopefully it's not too disruptive to your schedule

As always, we'll have plenty of tables and power for those of you who are bringing your printer(s). note: If you're planning on bringing your printer, please do let me know so I can plan an appropriate space for you and have enough extension cords and power strips!

For this meetup, we don't have crafted presentation or rigid agenda. Instead we'll focus on show and tell, socializing and Q&A with other... PLUS a free-for-all 3D capture station.

Kinect 3D Capture:Throughout the meetup, we'llhave a Kinect setup to let everyone play around with 3D capture. If you haven't played around with this technology, It's super cool and there are a number of utilities that make getting remarkably good volume capture quite easy. We'll have assistance available and if you bring a memory stick, you can take home a mesh or STL of yourself. If you don't already have a printer, you might be able to convince someone else to print yours! We'll be using a Pro Version of Skanect, so if you have experience with other tools, bring your Kinect and computer and we can do side-by-side comparisons.

Software: We'll use some of the sample 3d captures to run through NetFab BASIC, Repetier-Host and likely some other utilities. You'll get to see many of the little tricks that you have to figure out to make valid manifolds and good parts.

If you're a MeshLab Expert, we would love to see how you use it in your workflow.

The meetup was great!
I just finished my Rostock Max v2 build. I am looking for some help on software suggestions and calibration. The manual suggests Repetier. I am getting a lot of shoot offs, and not very accurate prints. I am using PLA and I have adjusted the temps from 210 to 190 with not much improvement in the variations.
I am wondering if Cura of another software would be better.

Hi chantelle, hope this helps. Use Cura (it is free), to calibrate. It has a bed leveling feature and slices stl files within minutes. Repetier will be good as well for printing the g-code files Cura creates. It also has a nice printer control panel. I hope this helps. Text me if you have any questions. I just finished my Z axis expansion and am finishing the bed.

As for accuracy that is easy to fix! Google "reprap calculator," this will tell you how to enter the code for better accuracy. It starts by asking how many steps your motor takes. A short cut would be to home all your axis' to zero. Than type in M501 to check your settings. The response should look like "M92 X114.2 ......" which simply means that if the X axis were to travel 50mm it would take 114.2 steps/ rotations if you will. If you move the X axis 50 on the computer but the motor only moves it 44mm. You know you need to change the distance for the X axis in the computer. The formula to find the new "M92 X#" is "(114.2×#)÷50)"­. This should give you the proper motor steps. Now enter that number as "M92 X(new number)#. Now home the X axis and move it again. It should be exactly 50. Now do that to the Y axis as well. Z is different.

Those steps though will get your accuracy up and permanent. Enter all commands in the Repetier Printer Control Panel and you should have much better prints! If it is Marlin firmware you can even save your changes with M500 then check that they saved with M501.

Hi everyone, I made a Youtube video (http://youtu.be/KEAihP8ZOPg) of the meeting last night. Please let me know if you don't want to be in the video. I'll edit you out. Good meetup. Looking forward to the next one.

Ok, I believe you are right, I was told incorrectly is was tomorrow and it's probably next Wed. That's GREAT and I will change my RSVP back to attending. You can delete this thread if you'd like. I have no prob with that since some people don't read threads past the first one.

I just wanted to confirm that the 3D printer meetup at Fab Lab is next Wednesday, so no conflict here! Katie is actually hosting a talk between Qualcomm, General Atomics, and 3D Robotics tonight, so we will be showing up in force to represent the community. Sorry I won't be able to make it!

we're sorting out the issue with two meeting right on top of eachother. We're going to push out the second one to early april. The meetup scheduled tomorrow (3/11/2014) will still be going on, please do attend.

3D scanning in my experience is easiest on mac. I have tried it on windows as well but there are a lot of drivers, files etc that one needs to get going in order to be set up correctly. That being said there are also programs that do this for you but let's be honest free is pretty good.

Get all your firmwares of choice. I am using 123d design and slic3r as well as Repetier host. Notice how I love free things yet? I start all my drawings in CAD though if you can't get a student version, try harder. There are millions of YouTube videos but ask for help and it yours. Your last step is to remember to get the CUDA driver for the skanect software.

3) Herr is the great part. Time to get going, plug everything in. Restart your Mac of choice with the Kinect plugged in because it needs to know that is what you are using the computer for. I could get technical but you might not follow the jargon. Open the CUDA driver and toggle the settings as follows. Change your file destination to an external drive. Loose your comouter, never your files. Change the quality of the scan to medium as you can touch it up later. Now save the settings and start scanning!

3B) I bet you want to save, export and all that other stuff right? Simplify your scan, than export it as an STL file! You already dedicated a file path and now you are ready to ADD it to Slic3r. This can be cleaned up by separating the file you just added! Then simply press delete and you are almost done! Feel free to message me directly if you have questions.

We're about:

This is a group for anyone interested in 3D Printing Technology. We're building this group as a regular venue to increase awareness, socialize and most importantly learn how this technology will touch everyone lives. Not just focused on the hardware, we want to share our collective experiences and best practices with the software workflows of 3d printing. If you need help getting your new printer dialed in, learn more about how to design 3d objects, or just to meet other like minded people, we look forward to seeing you!